


The Act of Love

by ossapher



Category: American Revolution RPF
Genre: Drunk Sex, F/M, Non-Explicit Sex
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-13
Updated: 2016-03-13
Packaged: 2018-05-26 08:51:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,831
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6232279
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ossapher/pseuds/ossapher
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>How John Laurens first encountered Martha Manning.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Act of Love

**Author's Note:**

> Warnings for non-consensual (though non-explicit) sex, internalized homophobia, slut-shaming, language. 
> 
> Many thanks to [john-laurens](http://john-laurens.tumblr.com/) for the historical consultation, and to [herowndeliverance](http://archiveofourown.org/users/atheilen/pseuds/herowndeliverance) the encouraging words.

Afterwards, when he racked his mind in search of answers that never came, the first thing Laurens remembered of that night was the scrape of teeth against his ear.

"Will," came a voice, very soft, so close he could feel the puff of breath, smell alcohol. Lips met his skin, dragged a wet trail down the side of his face. "Will, Will, Will."

"Not Will," he said. He’d said that, hadn’t he? It was impossible to remember; he'd drunk too much, far too much, at the party, trying to keep his mind off the way the fabric of their host's breeches stretched tight across his thighs, the way his curls spilled down his forehead. And then what? Staggering off to a guest room—a period of nothingness—the voice.

"Y’ look like enough," the voice said. A _woman’s_ voice. Her lips traveled down his neck, feathery and light. He’d managed to take off his coat and neckcloth before falling into bed, so her hands, raking at his shirt, exposed half his chest. She kissed between his collarbones, purposeful, sucking and biting.

"I’m not—I—you…it’s a mistake." Laurens was too drunk to reason further, too drunk to push her away, too drunk to do more than raise his head slightly and moan. Her long hair tickled his face. He thought he recognized her: the daughter of one of his father's business acquaintances. Margaret? Martha? "Don't—"

"Stop talking." She took his face between her hands and kissed him soundly on the lips. Because her hands seemed to be asking him to, he opened his mouth to hers. She tasted of wine.

"Mmm," she said, "that’s it," scrabbling again at his shirt, untucking it from his breeches as he watched in a daze. After that his memory fragmented, took on the texture of a dream. Her weight across his hips, pressure and heat. Her fingers tracing the lines of his ribs, raising goosebumps.

***

If he had not woken the next morning with a pounding headache, naked in bed with a naked woman half on top of him, he might have written off the whole thing as a bizarre dream. Confused fragments began to resurface: their mouths meeting…

"Awake then, lovely boy?" she said, with a bleary smile. She smelled of sweat. _His_ sweat. Oh, Lord. Of all the things that had happened to him drunk, this—this—

"You must have a positively hellish headache," she said, patting his cheek sympathetically.

Laurens lay there with his mouth open. He’d had an encounter or two in Geneva, but never with someone so cheerful and willing to engage in conversation the morning after.

Or so female.

"Well, shall I see if I can find some coffee? I dare say the servants here are discreet." She unpeeled her body from his with a rather obscene sound. That, at least, resembled his previous experience.

"That—yes. Coffee, good."

"It speaks!" With a giggle and a playful tweak at his nose, she climbed out of bed and donned the assortment of clothes she must have shucked out of the night before.

Laurens watched, half-dazed. His whole mind felt clotted-up and slow; aimless observations came and went. How many skirts did one woman wear? And he’d had no idea there was so much lacing-together involved.

"Oh, _now_ you notice my tits! I was beginning to wonder."

"Um." Laurens blushed. Tits were indeed in evidence, but he hadn’t been paying them any particular attention.

The lovely, if rumpled, young woman (Maude? Mariah?) before him cocked her head to one side. "You do speak English, don’t you? Fluently, I mean?"

"I’m from Carolina."

"Ah. So, no." She grinned and sashayed from the room.

After a moment, Laurens managed to get himself semi-vertical in bed. His head was pounding. He wasn’t sure if he was hungry or if he wanted to vomit; it felt like both. His thigh was smeared with sticky stuff, and he was fairly certain of its identity. _Curiouser and curiouser_. All the evidence indicated he’d brought off some kind of carnal act with this woman. His memory of the previous night was warped, distant, a scene half-glimpsed through the wrong end of a misaligned telescope.

He wasn’t sure whether to be proud of himself or not. On the one hand, he’d been wishing he could sincerely want... _this..._ ever since he’d realized that he didn’t. And she seemed quite a nice specimen of woman (if he was any judge, which he doubted somewhat): slightly plump, with chestnut hair and a puckish smile. But on the other hand, he’d had almost no part in the act that had taken place last night, as far as he could tell. He rather thought it was not to his credit to have slept with her, if he had not entirely done of it of his own volition. But for the moment the question felt entirely abstract, like a philosophy question to be discussed with a schoolmaster.

She returned with two steaming cups of coffee.

"Thank you," Laurens said automatically. "You seem well." Scalding coffee hit his tongue, and the pain jolted him into something more like wakefulness.

"I wasn’t as drunk as you might assume," she said. "I apologize for my forwardness last night. You look a bit like someone I knew."

A scrap of memory returned in vivid, roiling heat: sloppy kisses on the side of his face, a word exhaled again and again. That single memory carried a train of others, and the thin veil of abstraction tore away. Confusion and disgust washed over him. Disgust at whom? Surely himself. Bile rose in his throat. "Will."

For the first time she looked almost ashamed, or at least ashamed enough to hide her face by taking a sip of her own coffee. "That was his name, yes."

"Was? So you honor his memory by taking strangers into your bed." It was a beastly, ungentlemanlike thing to say, and Laurens knew it. He took deep breaths through his nose and willed himself not to vomit.

"I didn’t hear you protesting last night!" she snapped.

"I was too drunk to spell my own name last night!"

She looked unsettled, but came up from her next sip of coffee with her upper lip curled in an ugly sneer. "You’re telling me there’s a man on earth who wouldn’t enjoy a vigorous fuck from a beautiful woman."

Laurens slammed his coffee on the end-table, scalding his own hand as it splashed out, and began gathering up his clothing from where she’d strewn it about the room. A moment later she put it together; he heard her gasp.

"Wait."

"I’m going. If you see me about, please just pretend you don’t know me. You don’t know my name. I don’t know yours. Just—pretend you’ve never seen me before." Laurens stepped into his breeches, picked up his irretrievably rumpled shirt from the floor, and pulled it over his head. At some point during their encounter the collar had ripped.

"No—no. Please don’t go. I’m sorry."

He had folded his coat neatly over the back of a chair last night, and his throat constricted with gratitude that he could at least partially conceal the state of his shirt with it. He had not returned home; his father would be worried, maybe even suspect he had been with a man. John had an inkling that his father knew of his inclinations, although he prayed this was only the paranoia born of long, desperate concealment. God, how he hated hiding.

The girl helped him shrug on his coat before he could stop her. Her hands tucked the ripped collar neatly away. As she did, her fingers brushed against his bare neck, and he flinched.

She burst into tears. "I’m sorry. I’m sorry, I’ve upset you—I shouldn’t have—without being sure, I only thought—"

Guilt twisted in his stomach. Now he’d made a woman cry for doing something that by all rights should have given him pleasure. If he could not dissemble—if he could not even play the part of a proper man—at least he could be a little kinder. "No, no, please. I’ll stay a bit." Tentatively, he laid an arm on her shoulder, and she wrapped her arms tight around his waist and buried her face in the lapel of his coat, and he tried to ignore the way his skin crawled. "See?" he said, laying a gentle hand on her back, "you're a little thing. The top of your head doesn’t even reach my chin. You couldn’t force me into anything if you tried."

"I won’t tell anyone about—about you being a, a sodomite," she sniffled. "I swear. From the bottom of my heart." She let go of his waist and sat heavily on the bed, sinking into the covers.

Laurens sat down next to her, head still pounding. He took what was left of his coffee and drank it in one swallow. "Ah."

The girl looked up.

"Still hot."

She giggled. "Coffee tends to be, yes." She bobbed her head and pantomimed a curtsy. "Pleased to meet you. I'm Martha Manning."

"John Laurens. And I you." He reciprocated with a half-bow. _Be polite_. "I believe our fathers are acquainted."

"Mm," she said, tapping her chin, "I knew I'd seen you before. You’re awfully handsome, John Laurens. Did you know that?"

"You are not the first woman to have alluded to the fact. Truly, my good looks are a plague on your kind." If he made jokes, maybe this would start to be funny.

Martha laughed, a sound more honest and ugly and sincere than the flirtatious giggles of before. She looked at him slyly. "You know, you really look nothing like Will did in this light."

"Oh, the poor bugger’s ugly as well as dead?" And _that_ certainly blew past the bounds of civility, but he could not very well take the words back, once he had said them. Banter was too easy; it kept him from dwelling on what had happened to him, on the ridiculous insoluble mass of feelings in his gut. And if it also allowed him to vent a little of the resentment he felt towards Martha, despite her charming amiability, it was better than the alternative.

She laughed again. "You’re going to Hell, John Laurens."

It was meant to be playful, but it hit him like a blow. "Well, we've already established I'm a sodomite, so Hell is not exactly news." How odd that he could say the words _I’m a sodomite_ and not be instantly struck down. It was the first time he had declared himself aloud, he realized. Martha was by no means the first person to know of his tendencies, but she was, as it were, the first to receive an official verbal confirmation.

"No, no, no, I’ve reconsidered. A sweet fellow like you? They’ll be sure to let you slip into purgatory. And for your information, Will is neither ugly nor dead."

"You refer to him in the past tense."

"Yes. _We_ , as a joint entity, are past tense. _He_ , as a solo entity, is present tense."

"So, to cope with this fact, you go round lying with strange men and calling them by his name?" That was too far. Martha flinched, and John immediately hung his head in despair at his own incredible rudeness.

"We all have our vices," Martha said primly, after a moment. "I believe I already know yours. I imagine not many people do."

"I don’t exactly shout it from the rooftops, Miss Manning."

"Surely you’ve earned the right to call me Martha. It must be difficult, though. Living that much of your life in secret."

 _Try impossible_ , thought Laurens, but he had learned his lesson about guarding his tongue. He could not think of a way to say it without hurting her further. At last he settled for saying nothing at all.

After a moment of meditative silence, Martha heaved a sigh. "You know, John, we both have the same problem, and I believe there may be a solution."

"I’m not helping you murder this Will fellow, if that’s what you want."

Martha slapped his arm. "Stop it. Or I won’t tell you what it is."

"No, no. Please. Enlighten me."

She cleared her throat, allowed for a dramatic pause. "The problem is, we both love cock."

Laurens blinked, feeling blood flood into his face. "I don’t deny your premise, but if the conversation is going to continue in this line I am going to need more coffee."

Martha held out her cup, taking his own empty one and setting it in her lap. "Here. Have mine. The stuff’s disgusting."

"Mm. That’s why I scalded off all my taste buds. Strategy, see?" She laughed. He took a sip. It was lukewarm by now. "So what is your brilliant plan?"

"It would be a mutually beneficial arrangement," she said, lacing her fingers together to illustrate the idea. "On your side, you get to be a cuckold rather than a sodomite."

Laurens spilled what little remained of the coffee into his lap. "Are you proposing that…"

"Am I proposing? I suppose so, yes."

 _Cuckold or sodomite_. Both smacked of dishonor, but a cuckold was merely a pathetic figure, whereas men were hanged for sodomy.  Was this his way out? Could he make his father proud? Was he being played for a fool?  "You said this arrangement would be mutually beneficial. What's in it for you, Miss Manning?"

She looked away demurely. "I suppose, as a favor for my overlooking your gentleman callers, you might overlook mine?"

"Ah," said Laurens. "I see. Better an adulteress than a slut."

She looked hurt. "I don't like being called slut."

"Well, I don't like being called sodomite. So I'd say we're even." As infuriating as Laurens found her—as difficult as he found it to remain civil while being hungover and feeling deeply, paradoxically violated—it was a relief to find someone he could speak to honestly. He imagined what life might be like with her: dinner parties, peaceable coexistence in the same house, London society…freedom, as long as he was discreet, and she would understand, she wouldn't be disappointed in him…no hiding from her, no skulking about in his own home… "I suppose, if we're going to go through with this, we should have some ground rules. No name-calling, for one."

"Ooh, yes, let's put that in our wedding vows." She shifted slightly, laid a careful hand on his arm. "Does that mean you're considering it?"

"Yes," said John, shocked at himself. But how would they bring it off? "We can't just go ask your father straightaway. It has to look like I courted you."

"Lady Windimere is hosting a ball Saturday next. We meet there for the first time We dance. You fall for me, you tell all your friends how wonderful I am, but I'm uncertain. You write me a letter, I write you a letter, I arrange for us to be seated next to one another at Lord Bolingbroke's dinner party on the seventeenth. You tell your father you think you've actually found the one and ask him to drop in a good word with my father; I tell my friends about how dashing and handsome and rich you are until they're screaming with jealousy they don't get to be the ones to marry you. After a respectable period of courtship you present your suit to my father, I beg him to accept it, and we are joined in holy matrimony."

John looked at her, stunned. Laid out like that, one word after another, it sounded… it sounded… _plausible_. "God," he said, running his hands through his hair, "I need time to think."

"There will be time for you to withdraw from the arrangement if you want to," she murmured. "While we're still courting, if you decide that a marriage to me is not to your taste… I won't... make you."

Laurens swallowed with some difficulty. He hadn't even considered that angle; she could blackmail him into doing whatever she damn well pleased. He should have been grateful; instead, he only felt nauseous. How could he be so weak, that such a hateful course of action was necessary? "Thank you, Miss Manning," he said hoarsely.

"Martha," she corrected.

"Martha, then." She really was beautiful, with sweet dimples in her cheeks that belied her wicked tongue, lovely auburn curls, and a smile that, he was sure, could make good men light up inside. What a pity he was not among their number.

"Thank you, John. Truly. If we cannot be lovers, I hope… I hope we can be friends."

"Well, then. Here's to friendship." He thought he could do it. This was his best chance to do what was expected of him. He would be a fool to squander it.

"And to freedom," Martha said, raising her empty cup.

Laurens clinked his cup against hers. "To freedom, indeed."


End file.
